Im sorry, but i dont understand this part? where is that edited? (and kindly could u give me full path - i really dont know anything about the dir structure in linux - trying my best to learn as fast as i can) I know this should hide the 'x' that shows up for like 2 seconds when xbmc boots up (which would be nice to remove if possible) .. did i understand it right?

Sound is back, but i discovered that i only have center and rear L&R working. both front speakers are not working. I have creative SB 5.1 Live which is using SigmaTel STAC9708,11 chip (according to the alsamixer). What can I do for this?

Another thing, is there a way to hide all the echoed stuff that shows during booting up?

This is for the XBMC-theme-so method, if you want to use one of dudukes splashes then the steps are the same to make the .so file you, dudukes splashes create a different named .so file. so when you copy it over to replace the file in /usr/lib you need to make sure the name is the same as listed in the directory for the splash file you downloaded.